A million and a half inhabitants, Kharkiv is the big city of the North East. The 2nd city of the country. Moscow was hoping for its rapid fall because Kharkiv is very close to the Russian border, just a few tens of kilometers away. It’s taking longer than expected, but the Russian forces seem to be taking control of a good part of the city with airborne troops and at the cost of very heavy combat and shelling. They caused numerous civilian casualties, including in the city center. Hospital structures were also affected.
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The destruction already seems massive, and one inevitably thinks of appalling precedents, Aleppo in Syria, Grozny in Chechnya. Ukraine also fears the use of dirty weapons, such as double-blast thermobaric bombs. And she asks for a humanitarian corridor to evacuate the victims. Russian forces have also advanced in the south, from their bases in Crimea. They encircle Kherson and seem to have made the junction north of Mariupol, the big city of the South East. On the other hand, they attempted a breakthrough towards the North, at Zaporozhya, on the Dniepro road in the center of the country, a breakthrough which seems to have been postponed. Finally in Kiev, the situation is a little calmer. But maybe it’s the calm before the storm.
With these first military successes, Moscow certainly hopes for a chain effect: the objective is that the morale of the Ukrainians is damaged. But it does not take the path. On the contrary. In many cities, the inhabitants are preparing to resist, erecting barricades, etc. And the battle for information is in full swing with great skill on the Ukrainian side. For example, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense has appealed to the mothers of Russian soldiers to come to the Polish border to pick up the Russian soldiers made prisoners by the Ukrainians. It’s communication, but it’s clever, it’s a way of saying: we don’t kill our enemies and a way of trying to move Russian public opinion. To come back to the strictly military aspect, the Russian forces also seem to have logistical problems, of supply for the infantry.
A new round of negotiations between Ukrainians and Russians is also scheduled. It could start as early as March 2 in the evening, at the border with Belarus. But the first talks hadn’t yielded much 3 days ago. And it is hard to imagine that it can succeed. The 2nd week of war is about to begin. And the conflict seems rather set to last. Even if the Russians took control of the cities of Kharkiv, Kiev and Mariupol, they would then have to hold the ground. These are huge areas. More than 1600 km2 in total. It is likely that we are heading, in these cities, towards weeks or even months of guerrilla warfare.